


aiming and it sunk

by viscrael



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Drowning, First Meetings, M/M, a mermaid au b/c im. horrible, lance is a sophomore in college
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viscrael/pseuds/viscrael
Summary: So he goes back to the ocean. He sits there and watches, tries to keep from thinking about that night, fails, and thinks about his savior instead. Sometimes he falls asleep there, and he wakes around two A.M. with sand in his hair and a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, he goes. Again and again and again every night, until he drives the route to the beach from heart.
Nothing happens. Nothing, nothing, nothing—until New Years.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly im not even surprised that my first fic for klance is a mermaid au like at this point i have approximately 12 million merppl aus planned out lmao
> 
> might become a series? not super long, but like, this definitely isnt The Only thing for this au ill write. im not sure if itll be added as another chapter or if itll be small fics w/i a series yet tho so im putting 1/? jic rn
> 
> **TW:** theres mentions of drowning and possible death, altho no1 dies...if that bothers or upsets u, proceed w/ caution!! :0 EDIT: OH also theres mentions of alcohol/underage drinking!! theres nothing super explicit but, lance got drunk in the past (not super frequently but It happened)

An angel.

No—a person. A worried face. A pair of eyes, a head haloed by the sun—or the moon—or—

The person’s lips move. A voice floats past his ears, distant and buzzing, like spoken from underwater. Underwater. Their eyelashes flutter; they glance around frantically, nervously, skittishly; they disappear.

Lance is left feeling—something.

 

\--

 

“I’m telling you,” he says, “I’m not crazy.”

“Right, because we’re supposed to believe that you saw some sort of  _mythical creature_?” Pidge quirks an eyebrow at him from under her glasses. They’re falling down the bridge of her nose, but she doesn’t move to push them up.

Lance frowns, crossing his arms defiantly. “Exactly!”

“I’m sort of on Pidge’s side here, dude,” Hunk confesses. At Lance’s indignant noise of protest, he puts his hands up in some semblance of surrender. “You have to admit it’s pretty hard to believe!”

“But it’s the truth!”

“To you, sure.” Pidge finally fixes her glasses.

Lance narrows his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you weren’t in the most, uh, sober state of mind last night, and you probably just imagined the whole thing. You know, the mind-playing-tricks-on-you thing.”

“It was real, though! I swear!”

Neither of them says anything after that, giving up on arguing with him. It should appease Lance that they gave in first, but they still don’t _believe him_.

“Fine.” He stands up, slipping his shoes on haphazardly and grabbing his keys from the counter on his way. “I’ll prove it to you.”

 

\--

 

“This is so stupid.”

“You agreed to this.”

Pidge doesn’t respond to that, and Lance trudges forward, leading the way. They could only find one real flashlight when they scrounged around the apartment, so Hunk and Pidge are just using their phones’ lights to guide them. Out here, there aren’t many streetlamps, and the minimal light they brought is about all they have.

Hunk puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder, pulling them both to a stop. Pidge halts behind them. “Wait, dude, did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Lance lowers his flashlight, and all three of them stand in silence, waiting. Nothing comes, and Pidge shakes her head.

“You’re just bein’ paranoid, don’t worry about it.” Lance brushes Hunk’s hand off his shoulder and continues the way they were going. “We’re almost there, c’mon!’

“I’m not just ‘being paranoid,’” Hunk mumbles, more to himself than anyone. “And even if I was, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, right now. Wait!”

“Hunk, there’s nothing—“

Pidge stops mid-sentence. She must have heard it too, Lance thinks, right before he hears it.

Instead of stopping like the two of them, though, it only pushes him forward until he’s all but running, sliding down the sand dunes at a sprint.

“Lance!” Hunk calls behind him, followed by Pidge’s angry, “What the hell are you _doing_?!”

“Proving it to you!”

 

\--

 

By the time they reach the shore, the noise has stopped.

Lance stomps his food on the sand in frustration, almost dropping his flashlight in the process. “Shit!”

“What,” Pidge is behind him now, his friends finally caught up and out of breath, “was the _point in that_?!”

“It was—“ Lance gestures towards the ocean wildly with one hand, the other waving the flashlight around. It shines across the beach, illuminating the vacancy around them as if to further his point. “You heard that! Both of you did!”

“So?”

Hunk pulls himself up from where he’d been bent over, panting, and wipes his forehead. “I mean, it was scary, I’ll give you that, but…”

“Not inherently mythical,” Pidge finishes.

“Oh, c’mon! What are you going to pass that off as?!”

“A bear,” she answers immediately.

Lance glares at her, dropping his arms to his sides. “You both know that wasn’t a bear. Bears don’t even _live_ around here, and that didn’t even—didn’t even sound, like, threatening! It sounded like a person!”

“Okay, so it wasn’t a bear,” Pidge relents, already beginning to turn around and head back home. Hunk hesitantly starts to follow. “It was a person, like you said. Probably swimming.”

“In thirty-degree weather? And at _night_?”

“What do you want us to say, Lance? You said it was a person—sure, it’s a person. Isn’t that enough?”

“No! It wasn’t a—a _person_ person, no one would be out here right now—“

“Except us,” Hunk interrupts. He wraps his arms around himself, cold despite the heavy jacket he’s wearing. Lance has to admit it’s pretty bad tonight, the wind chill only making things worse.

“You guys know what it was!” he insists.

“One strange noise doesn’t mean mermaids are real, Lance,” Pidge sighs, pushing her glasses up her nose.

Lance gets that she’s annoyed; it’s past midnight, she’s probably just as cold as he is, and no doubt they’re all tired. But he needed to prove it to them, and he had been so _close_ to it, too…

“Just like aliens aren’t real, right,” he mumbles, but his shoulders have deflated, and he’s following them up the beach and to his car, parked a quarter mile away.

“It’s actually probable that aliens exist,” Pidge says, “while it’s been proven that mermaid folklore just came from sailors seeing seals and sea lions and walruses and mistaking them for fish-people. But the chances that we’re the _only_ planet capable of forming life—“

“Okay, okay, we get it.” Lance rubs his forehead, tired now that his adrenaline and resolve has calmed down. “Pidge is right, Lance is wrong. You can stop rubbing it in now.”

They don’t talk about the episode at the beach the rest of the way to the car, or on their way home.

 

\--

 

Despite what he said, Lance hasn’t given up.

The next night, he drives out to the beach again, telling Hunk he’s going to a party some friends from class invited him to. It’s true that he’d been invited, and he’d even planned on going at first—but on his way to the stranger’s house, he can see the line of the ocean peeking out through houses, the backdrop of suburbia, and he’s changing directions before he can even think about what he’s doing.

He makes it there in record time, parking as close as he can get. Sand gets in his shoes and socks, and he ends up just taking them off and shoving them in the passenger seat. He leaves his wallet there, too, but takes his phone. It’s the only source of light tonight.

It’s a few hours earlier than it had been when he’d dragged Hunk and Pidge out here, his phone’s clock reading 9:58 P.M. next to the previous one A.M., but he still makes his way towards the shore. No one else is here. He’s alone.

The moon hangs heavy over him, and he thinks about that saying—“like they hung the moon.” It’s waxing, or maybe waning. He can’t remember.

The water is still, still, still. Not like it was last week. Last week it had been thrashing, violent, prepared to swallow him whole. He doesn’t remember how he ended up in the water, or why he was walking around drunk at that time of night except he was bored and the party he’d been at had been disappointing. He’s always liked the ocean. Maybe it was expected that he would find his way here, even intoxicated and alone.

Why had he been alone? He doesn’t remember. But it was dark, and he’d been counting his steps, stumbling with sand in his toes—then it had been cold, and suffocating, his lungs flooding and his chest burning, burning, burning—

He shakes his head. He hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since then. He hadn’t told Pidge and Hunk that he’d—that he’d been…in danger, that night. Only that he’d been at the beach and a little more than tipsy, and that he’d seen something. Someone.

At first, he’d thought it was an angel. He thought that he’d died out there, writhing and lashing and choking, and this creature was coming to take him away. Somehow he knew they were beautiful in a horrifying way. He’d gotten a glimpse of something like sharp, _sharp_ teeth when they’d spoken. He wishes he’d heard what they said. He wishes he knew what they sounded like. Was it English? A human language? Or was it something else?

But he’d survived.

He’s here now, and when he finished coughing up water on the beach, he realized that he hadn’t died—he’d been saved. But not by an angel.

The next couple of days were spent doing as much research as he could on aquatic creatures, mythology and the like. He felt sort of stupid at first, when he came to the conclusion that there wasn’t anything it could’ve been but a mermaid—but then he’d thought, yeah, yeah, that sounds right. That’s all it could have been. No one was around that night to save him. No one except him would have been stupid enough to plunge head first into freezing water.

Pidge thinks he’s an idiot for believing in something like this. She never _calls_ him an idiot, but he knows she thinks it. Hunk too, to some degree. They think it’s just because he was drunk or depressed or on new medication. They think it was anything but _real_.

But his mind hadn’t played tricks on him. He’s sure of it.

The water stirs.

Lance’s head shoots up. He’d been staring at a seashell and prodding it with his bare foot, but all of his attention lands on the sea in front of him, eyes searching for something, anything. A sign that he isn’t crazy. Maybe he’ll get lucky this time. Although, how lucky can it be, he thinks, if Pidge and Hunk aren’t here to see it?

Where the water had once been still, there are ripples. It could be anything.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Lance,” he mumbles to himself, but he does anyway. His pulse thrums in his ears, his heartbeat loud and fast in his chest. He’s thinking about it again, that night, the way he’d gasped for breath and only found water, the seaweed his ankle had gotten caught on, the heaviness that had settled in his limbs and the want to just _stop struggling, give in_ —

_Stop it. Stop it._ He forces the image of that angel to the surface. Dark hair. Gray eyes, he remembers, and when the light from the moon hit them, they shone purple. Like a sea creature. Undoubtedly otherworldly. He remembers the shape those lips had taken as they spoke and the teeth that poked out between them. Hands on his arms, around his torso tugging him to the surface, warm. Finding air where there had once been none.

He tries to pull up more, more memories, more images of that creature. He wants to know what his savior looked like, all of them, not just the silhouette. But he can find nothing else, and the water calms.

 

\--

 

Hunk brings it up to Shiro that Lance has become obsessed with the ocean recently.

“Stop acting like I’m obsessed,” Lance says. “I’ve always liked the ocean. It’s nothing new.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been going out there, like, every day. That’s not normal, man, especially since it’s not like you’re gonna go swimming in the middle of December.”

He blanches, hand tightening around the pencil in his grip. “How did you know I was…?”

“No offence, but Pidge and I aren’t stupid.”

Lance doesn’t say anything. From the seat next to him, Shiro frowns.

“Lance,” he puts a hand on the other’s shoulder, comforting even now. “Is that true?”

“I mean, sure, I guess.” He huffs, shrugging Shiro’s hand off of him. It’s…too much. Too much worry and concern for something that needs none. “There’s nothing weird with that, you guys, I just like the beach. It’s, you know, nice at night.”

Hunk sighs like he’s heard this excuse before. He probably knew Lance was gonna wave it off like this. The topic switches easily after that, but after class, Shiro pulls Lance aside privately and asks if he can have a moment.

“Uh..” Lance glances back at Hunk, who only shrugs and nods. “Sure, I guess? What’s this all about?”

Shiro leads them down the hallway, in the opposite direction of the exit. He’s heading towards the cafeteria, Lance realizes.

“Are you hungry?” he asks instead of answers.

 

\--

 

“I’m not crazy,” Lance says.

He doesn’t even sound convincing at this point, and he knows it—he doesn’t care, either. Pidge and Hunk still don’t believe him, and they’ve refused to return to the beach with him. What’s worse: he’s sat by the ocean every night for the past two weeks with no sign of _anything_. Not even that sound he’d heard the first time.

It doesn’t keep him from returning, but he’s started believing that maybe it really _was_ just in his mind.

“I didn’t say you were,” Shiro says. He crosses his arms over the table, leaning in. While it would’ve made anyone else seem closed off, he only looks friendlier, more caring for it.

“So then…” Lance glances up, an eyebrow raised disbelieving at the older man. “You believe me?”

“I’d be a hypocrite if I said I didn’t.” Shiro smiles.

“I’m sorry.” Lance holds up a hand, blinking. “Just, uh— _what_?!”

“I believe you,” Shiro repeats, a hint of amusement in his voice. “That what you saw wasn’t human or, uh, ‘normal,’ I guess you would say. I don’t think you’re crazy, either.”

Lance stares at him for another moment, then leans back in his chair. “Oh. Well, uh, in that case, good. That’s, uh, that’s good. I think.”

“You don’t have to sound so unsure about it,” Shiro laughs. “I’m not crazy either, for the record. I’ve seen things very similar to what you have.”

“You’ve seen _mermaids_?”

“Merpeople,” he says.

“Holy _shit_.”

 

\--

 

Even though Lance trusts Shiro, and trusts that Shiro really has seen what he says he has, Lance isn’t satisfied. He continues going to the beach.

Just knowing that they exist isn’t enough for him. He wants to see one—no, actually, not just _one._ He wants to see the person—merperson, whatever—that saved him. He wants to meet them, thank them, maybe, or at least know what they look like. What they sound like. It’s bothering him that he doesn’t know.

Whoever they were, they saved him. If it weren’t for them, he would’ve died that night. The last time Pidge or Hunk saw him would’ve been as he was running out the door, throwing on a scarf and beanie and patting his pockets to make sure he had his phone, his keys, his wallet. The last words he spoke to them would’ve been _see you tomorrow!_ He would’ve shown up dead on the beach the next morning. Or maybe caught in a net by some fishermen, his lifeless body floating in the water—

This is a bad train of thought. _Stop it. Stop it_. The point is that he would’ve been dead were it not for that person, and he can’t let that debt go unpaid. He needs to thank them. He _needs_ to, or this thing, this obsession with the ocean and his own death, will never leave him alone. He’ll be stuck on December 13th for the rest of his life if he doesn’t do this.

So he goes back to the ocean. He sits there and watches, tries to keep from thinking about that night, fails, and thinks about his savior instead. Sometimes he falls asleep there, and he wakes around two A.M. with sand in his hair and a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, he goes. Again and again and again every night, until he drives the route to the beach from heart.

Nothing happens. Nothing, nothing, nothing—until New Years.

He’s supposed to be with Hunk and Pidge and Shiro at a party hosted by the university’s resident princess, an upperclassman named Allura; she’s not really royalty, but her father built the university, and she has the looks, kindness, and grades to match her title, so it sticks. Usually Lance would be dying to go to a party hosted by her, considering the giant crush he’s had on her since freshman year, but tonight he’s not up to it.

He hasn’t been one for parties ever since the thirteenth. He doesn’t know why, but he’s been too— _something_ to get drunk, to let loose since then. Too scared, maybe. That he’ll make the same mistake and his savior won’t be there this time.

He doesn’t go. He drives to the beach with EDEN playing from his stereo, turned all the way up to drown out the distant thrum of house parties around him. He can see fireworks in the distance, despite it still being eleven. He parks, grabs his phone and the flashlight that has made itself home in his backseat, and heads to the shore.

It’s colder tonight than it has been. It feels like—like the thirteenth, and he shivers at the memory. He counts his steps. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…

A noise.

It could be fireworks, but it sounds nothing like a crack or a boom or a faux gunshot. He doesn’t stop, just keeps counting. Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, _thirteen_ …

The noise again. The same that he heard the night he forced Hunk and Pidge out here. He wonders if Shiro has ever heard this, if he knows what it means or what’s making it. If it’s the merpeople, or something more vicious.

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. He steps on a seashell and jumps back, swearing loudly. The noise stops. He stops as well.

Someone shoots off another firework. Crackle, boom. Soaring. Water splashes. Lance throws his phone and flashlight into the sand behind him and runs. Twentyonetwentytw owentythreetwentyfourtwentyfive—

His feet meet the water, and he sucks in a breath. He’s not going to get pulled in, he tells himself. _I’m okay here, I’m okay here, nothing has happened since then, I’ll be fine, I’m okay here_.

More water splashing. He thinks he can see the outline of—a tail. Is that a tail? He wades further in the water, despite his body screaming for him to stay out, stay away, it’s so _cold_ and _dark_ and _suffocating, you’re going to drown_ —

“Hey!” he calls. “Hey, wait, don’t go! I just want to talk!”

The water doesn’t splash again, and he thinks for a heartbreaking moment that they’re gone, disappeared into the depths. He’s lost his chance, his first and maybe only chance, he thinks.

Then. A head of hair.

Another firework goes off, and he meets purple eyes.

At the crackle _boom,_ the person—merperson—flinches and starts to head under the water again. Lance reaches out a hand, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

“Stop, it’s okay, it can’t hurt you!” he yells, the words coming out in a rush so the person will hear him before they really _do_ leave for good. “Don’t go! I just—are you—are you the one from the other day? The one who saved me?”

The merperson stares at him for a long, excruciating moment. Another firework goes off, and while they flinch again, they make no move to leave. In the light proved, Lance catches what might be a masculine face and two, gill-like slits on each side of the person’s neck. They’re dark purple, matching the pair of eyes that have haunted and comforted Lance for weeks now.

“It’s you,” he says, maybe whispers. He wades deeper in the water, uncaring of the cold or the way his clothes are soaked to his waist now. “It _is_ you!”

“Stop!”

Lance does, but it’s more from surprise than it is the command. The voice is definitely masculine, a little hoarse like it hasn’t been used in a long time. The merman speaks with an accent. It’s clearer in the next demand he gives.

“Don’t come closer.” Everything he says trills and curls, the _o’s_ sounding like popped bubbles. It’s addictive. Lance wants to hear more.

“What’s—what’s wrong?” Lance recovers from his shock enough to respond. He raises his hands in a show of submission. “Did I do something wrong?”

The merman doesn’t say anything for a moment. He looks around like he’s afraid of someone overhearing them, despite being completely alone. “You weren’t supposed to see me,” he hisses. “I wasn’t even supposed to help you to begin with…”

“So you _are_ the one who helped me!”

“Shh!”

Lance shuts up. The merman runs a hand through his hair, dark and glistening under the dim light, and there are fins attached to his forearms. The hair pushed back reveals that in place of a human’s ears, this creature has something like a cross between cat ears and another pair of fins, wiggling in what might be annoyance. Or fear.

“Just go back,” the merman hisses, but the _o_ still pops. “It’s best if you just act like you never saw me.”

_But I did see you_ , Lance wants to say, _there’s no way I can pretend I didn’t._ He’s thought of nothing but this moment for weeks now, and he knows, knows for certain, that he can’t forget and he can’t pretend.

But there’s not enough time to say that. Instead, he blurts out, “My name is Lance! Tell me yours!”

The merman stops where he had been ready to dive back under the water. He meets Lance’s eyes—purple, _so purple_ —and, before disappearing back into the ocean, answers, “Keith. My name is Keith.”

 

\--

 

When Lance gets back to shore, he’s shivering and freezing his ass off, dazed and smiling and whispering to himself, _Keith, Keith, Keith_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are loved!!! feel free to subscribe to this fic if u want altho im still not sure if the next partll be added here ahah
> 
> this is my first time characterizing any of these charas btw, so if yall have any issues w/ it so far or any critique, i wld love to read it!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has been having dreams about the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i continued this on here, as tentatively predicted. no keith in this chapter (bc im . the worst) but itll happen eventually. i love that fish dude too much not to include a crap ton of keith (and eventual requited klance, ofc
> 
> i didnt edit some of this bc its 11 pm and i have school tmrrw so. excuse typos/grammatical issues for now pls + thank, ill fix em in the morning
> 
> heyy shiros plot important sort of what a surprise
> 
> double heyyy is there rlly a plot? who knows. right now im just wingin it

“So how much do you really know about them?”

Shiro shrugs, taking a sip of his water. He sets the glass back on the table with a _clank_. “A little.”

“More than the average Joe,” Lance says. The cafe they’re at is empty except for them and an older couple sitting a few booths away. Hunk was supposed to join them after class for dinner, but he bailed last minute to help Pidge with something. Lance knows it wasn’t a coincidence; Hunk and Pidge both think that Shiro is a “good influence” on Lance. They think that he’s going to find a way to stop Lance’s weird obsession, or at least distract him from it.

Oh, how perfectly wrong they are, Lance thinks, and he’s secretly a little glad that Hunk ditched if only because it means he can talk to Shiro about _this_ now.

“More than ‘the average Joe,’ yeah,” Shiro agrees. “It’s difficult to learn about them when they don’t want you to, though, so I really only know the surface of it.”

Lance grins. “The _surface_ of it, huh?”

Shiro smiles back, quietly amused, but doesn’t say anything about it.  “I’ll explain everything I know some time,” he promises. “It’s too much to tell you over dinner.”

“How long have you known they existed?”

“Uh, I’d say about…” He pauses, looking off somewhere behind Lance’s head while he thinks. “Ten years? Maybe a little more?”

“Ten years,” Lance repeats. “You’ve known about them for a _decade_?”

“Since I was just starting high school, yeah. My family doesn’t go to the beach often, but I convinced them to take me every summer after I met…”

Lance waits for the rest of the sentence. It’s odd that Shiro would pause at that, he thinks, that he would be hesitant to talk about it when he’d just promised he would tell Lance _everything_. And Shiro is definitely going to have his work cut out for him, Lance thinks; he really does want to know everything.

It’s January 3rd, and Lance has been having dreams about the ocean. They aren’t the nightmares they used to be—they’re not about drowning or teetering across the pier drunk or a pair of eyes devouring instead of saving. Now, they’re about Keith, and nothing else but Keith. The meeting. What happened and what could’ve happened and what he wishes happened. Lance wishes he could’ve found a way to convince Keith to stay, wishes he could’ve had more time. He wants to know why Keith was so scared of them talking, why he saved Lance if he knew he wasn’t supposed to, why he stayed even after he saw that Lance was there.

Does he know that Lance has sat by that shore almost every night? Has he seen him? Lance wonders if he pops his head to the surface and catches sight of a lone boy surrounded by sand and the cold. If he thinks about coming up, sometimes, or if he does and Lance doesn’t know. If he watches. If he even thinks about Lance at all.

Why would he? Part of Lance doesn’t think Keith would ever remember a human like him. But the rest of him wants so _badly_ for Keith to remember him (did he catch Lance’s name? Does he remember it?) that he can’t bear to believe otherwise.

No, no, he thinks. Keith _must_ remember him. When they spoke, he knew that Lance was the boy he saved. Even weeks after it happened, he knew.

Shiro listens to Lance retell the story in depth. He doesn’t leave anything out—not the sound of Keith’s voice or the fireworks or the cold. Shiro is a good listener, and he nods when appropriate and asks questions when needed. When the story is over, he leans back in his booth, letting his fork clang unceremoniously against his plate.

“I’m surprised you were as calm as you were,” he admits. “Most people would freak out a lot worse the first time experiencing something like that. I know I did.”

“Are you kidding? I yelled at the guy!” Lance pauses. “Merguy. Merperson. Do merpeople even have genders?”

Shiro’s lips pull into a small smile, and he lets out a sound that might be a laugh. “Sort of. They’re a lot more human than we think they are, but they do have a more...unconventional way of going about genders, at least compared to our binary. But yes, there are mermen and ‘merguys’, I guess.”

“Oh.” Lance shifts in his seat. “How did you find that out?”

“I asked.”

“You... _asked_?”

“I asked,” Shiro repeats.

“Who the hell did you ask?! And how did you get them to talk to you long enough to think about something like that in the first place?!” The couple a few booths away glares at Lance, and he offers them an apologetic smile before lowering his voice. “I mean, I could barely get a name out of him…How did you manage something like that?”

“I know someone.”

“Are you telling me,” Lance leans forward, “that you’re friends with a merperson?”

“It’s more of a surrogate brother situation,” Shiro says, shrugging a shoulder like this isn’t a huge fucking deal, holy _shit_.

“You’re surrogate brothers with a _merperson_.”

“Yes.”

“Shiro, what the hell kind of double life—”

Lance’s incredulous question isn’t finished. Shiro’s phone rings, and he slides out of the booth as he answers, smiling at Lance and mouthing _be right back_ before he leaves the restaurant to continue his conversation. Lance sits at the table alone to stew in this newfound information.

_Okay, okay,_ he thinks, _let’s go over what I know so far. One: mermaids—merpeople—are real. Two: there are some living at the beach I’ve lived around literally my entire life. Three: Shiro is best-friends-slash-brothers with one—or multiple?—and has known about them for an entire decade. Four:_

He needs to see Keith again.

 

\--

 

Lance wakes up in cold sweat.

When he gets to the kitchen, Hunk is already there, bent over so he can scrounge through the fridge for what looks to soon be a sandwich. He dumps his ingredients on the counter and turns around to face Lance, blinking the sleep out of his eyes.

“What’re you doing up?” he asks between a yawn.

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“I can’t go to sleep.”

Lance looks at him. Hunk looks away. “But you’re, like, about to pass out.”

“Yeah, I know, until the second I actually _try_ to fall asleep. Then my body starts acting like it’s sun up.” He turns back towards the counter, pulling a knife and spoon from the drawer and grabbing a loaf of bread irritably. “Anyway, what are you up for? Another bad dream?”

“Uh, sort of.” Lance moves to pull himself up on the counter adjacent to Hunk, accidentally kicking against the cabinet underneath on his way.

Hunk pauses when he realizes that Lance isn’t going to offer any further explanation. He sets out two slices of bread and goes to work cutting a tomato. “Want one?” he asks, nodding towards his food.

Lance shakes his head. “I’m good. Had a late dinner.”

They sit there for a few minutes in what would normally be companionable silence, but Lance is still shivering from his dream. He’s wearing the warmest pajamas he owns and the pair of slippers Pidge got him for Christmas, but for some reason, he’s still cold.

“You know you can tell me about it, man,” Hunk says quietly, spreading mayonnaise on a slice. “You don’t usually get like this. I’m worried about you.”

Normally, Lance would shake that off with a one-liner and a grin before finding a reason to disappear back to his room. He’d evade the conversation for as long as he needs to with talk of Hunk’s new kind-of-girlfriend or progress on the project he and Pidge have been working on for almost a year now or homework from their shared Physics class.

But this isn’t normally, and Lance pushes off from the counter.

“Whoa, hey, what’s up—“ Hunk’s question is interrupted by Lance pulling him into a hug, wiping furiously at his eyes on the way. “Hey, hey, what’re so you upset about? Did something happen?”

“Nothing,” Lance mumbles, but he hasn’t pulled away. “Just…thanks. You know, for worrying.”

Hunk doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then he brings a hand up to hug Lance back, as warm and comforting as he’s always been. Hunk’s always given the best hugs. “I’m your best friend, of course I’m worried about you. You don’t have to thank me or anything.”

Logically, Lance knows that. They’ve been inseparable since grade school, and this is far from the first time Hunk has shown that he cares about Lance or vice versa. But it’s been a rough couple of weeks, so he forgives himself if he’s a little emotional.

“So,” Hunk says once they pull away. “What’s going on with you lately?”

Lance pauses. “Just…you know…”

“Are you still caught up in this whole mermaid business?”

He looks away guiltily. Hunk turns around to finish making his sandwich, sliding it onto a plate and heading towards the kitchen table. He sits and gestures to the chair across from him. Lance takes the seat.

“This is getting weird, man,” Hunk admits. “I mean, not that it wasn’t _originally_ weird, since, you know, fish people and whatever. But it’s not like you to get so caught up on something, even if it’s a weird conspiracy theory.”

“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” Lance retaliates automatically. At the pointed look Hunk gives him, he sighs, leaning back in his chair. “I don’t know. I’ve just…been dealing with some other things lately too. And I keep having dreams about…”

“About?”

How is he supposed to say _about Keith_? He hasn’t explained to Hunk or Pidge about what happened. Shiro’s the only one who knows; Shiro’s the only one who would believe him. If he told Hunk right now, he’d probably just wave it off as more proof that he’s “obsessed” or that he’s “getting caught up” on it.

But hasn’t that been what his friends have been saying since the beginning? Part of him reasons he has nothing left to lose. They already think he’s crazy, losing sleep over something like this. What harm could come from confiding in Hunk?

“The night that I originally saw…him,” Lance starts. Before he can get any further, however, Hunk raises a hand to stop him.

“Whoa, wait, ‘him’? Who’s him?”

“The merman.” Lance hates how that sounds coming out of his mouth. God, he really does sound crazy. “The…merguy. You know what I mean.”

“Okay…” Hunk nods slowly.

“For the sake of this conversation, pretend that you believe me when I say I saw a merman.”

“I’ll try. Go on.”

“The night that I saw him,” Lance continues, “I was walking around the beach drunk. You guys already know that part, obviously—but I…I don’t remember how, but I guess at one point I thought it was a good idea to go swimming? Except, I was drunk, and it was the middle of the night…”

He wishes that Hunk could just pick up from there where the rest of the story is going. Lance’s lungs are starting to burn, and he feels the same thing in the tips of his fingers tingling up his arms and into his shoulder blades.

Hunk reaches across the table and puts a hand on his. “Hey, Lance, it’s alright. Just…tell me what happened if you can, yeah?”

“Have you ever drowned before?”

He blinks at the question. It’s odd, no doubt. Lance isn’t doing himself any favors when it comes to the “convince your friends you didn’t just hallucinate the whole thing” objective.

“No.” Hunk frowns. His hand is still pressed into Lance’s, and he leans across the table, brows furrowed in worry. “Wait, are you saying you…?”

“Started to.” Lance’s lungs _burn_. He can’t tell if it’s with the memory or if it’s in real time, but they burn burn burn. The hand on his grounds him a little bit, calms the ache and the tingling if only minutely, and he takes a deep breath. “I didn’t, obviously. That guy saved me.”

“A merman saved you,” Hunk repeats.

“Yeah.”

They only look at each other. Lance takes his hand back, throwing both in the air defensively despite half his mind still being back at that beach, in that water, kicking. “I swear! And that’s not all, I saw him the other day! He told me his name!”

Hunk opens his mouth to respond when the door leading to the hallway opens. Pidge pokes her head out, looking tired and disgruntled and very much annoyed.

“What the hell are you yelling about at three in the goddamn morning?!” she demands, stomping her way across the room to Lance the best she can when still half-asleep.

“It’s only, like, midnight,” Lance defends.

She glares at him, but pulls a chair up beside Hunk and takes a bite of his sandwich silently.

“Sorry about waking you up,” Hunk tells her. “You can go back to bed now if you want. We’ll try to be quieter.”

She snorts. “As if that’s gonna happen.”

“Hey!”

“I didn’t even say your name, stop acting like I called you out.” She crosses her arms over her chest, her oversized pajamas scrunching with the movement. It occurs to Lance that what she’s wearing might be Hunk’s. The three of them end up sharing most things, living in such close quarters and with such close ties.

Lance has known Hunk since almost as long as he can remember, and they’ve been best friends since elementary. It wasn’t until high school that Pidge forced her way into their little group, but she did so quickly and efficiently, until the duo was a trio. Despite how much she complains about Lance, he knows she cares about him just as much as Hunk does. They all care about each other more than anything.

Which is probably why she’s staying at all, he thinks. Like she said, he wasn’t exactly quiet in his explanation to Hunk, and no doubt she heard the topic of conversation and decided she’d stay up to check it out herself. Not without a lot of grumbling and glaring, however.

“What’s got you yelling this late, anyway?” She asks, nudging his shin under the table. It’s probably meant to be more of a kick, but it’s the best she can muster when still waking up.

Hunk fills her in on the story so far, glancing between her and Lance like he isn’t sure whether he should be the one telling it. Pidge, to her credit, stays silent through the whole thing, and even when she’s caught up, she doesn’t do anything but adjust her glasses and tell Lance to go on.

He does, and he doesn’t leave anything out. He thought he’d gotten some of it out of his system when he told Shiro, but he can still feel himself gushing, with excitement or fear or what Pidge and Hunk would call “obsession.” He’s not obsessed with Keith (okay, maybe a little); just…infatuated, maybe. In awe. But anyone would be, after experiencing the things he has.

“So you talked to a merman,” Pidge says. “Whose name is Keith. And…you keep going out to the beach in hopes that you can talk to him again?”

“Pretty much, yeah.” Lance nods. Hunk’s halfway through with his sandwich by now, and he silently hands portions to both Lance and Pidge to munch on. They take the offerings gratefully.

“The dream thing I can understand,” Hunk says. “I mean, I’m not a psychiatrist, but it sounds like your brain’s way of working through trauma. That would also explain why you’re so stuck on the beach.”

“The beach thing’s not about _that_.” Lance huffs. “That parts…about Keith. I wanted to prove that he was real.”

“And now you want _more_ proof that he’s real?”

Lance points a finger at Pidge. “So you admit that he’s real!”

“I never said that.”

“You just did.”

“I said that _you_ —“

“Guys!” Hunk slams his hands into the table to get their attention. They stop bickering long enough to listen. “It’s too early for you two to be doing this. We need to talk about Lance’s problems.”

“I don’t have _problems_ ,” he says. “It’s not…You guys, I just want to know that I’m not crazy. And…I want to thank him. For saving me.”

The confession blankets a silence over the three. Hunk and Pidge look at each other and seem to have a silent conversation about what to do before they both sigh, almost perfectly in unison.

“Let’s go to bed,” Hunk suggests. He pushes his chair back, stands up, and takes his empty plate to the sink. “We’re all really tired, and there’s no way we’re gonna be able to think about this clearly when it’s, like, midnight or something.”

“And you guys are gonna want to talk about it in the morning?” Lance doesn’t intend to sound so bitter, but it comes out that way, and his posture—arms crossed, weight on one leg, looking at the ground—doesn’t seem to help. His friends exchange another look, one that doesn’t go unnoticed by him.

“You seem pretty convinced that what you saw was the real deal,” Pidge says. She stands up, stretching her arms above her head. Through a yawn, she admits, “I wanna see it for myself.”

“Wait.” Lance blinks at her. “Really? You’re really up for this?”

“Sure.”

“It probably wouldn’t hurt anything,” Hunk agrees from the sink.

“So…” Lance says slowly. “We’re doing this. Actually doing this?”

“I guess so.” Pidge makes her way to the door, already disappearing down the hallway to return to sleep. “’Night, nerds.”

“See you in the morning!” Hunk flicks the faucet off when he’s done rinsing his plate and turns to Lance. “I’m gonna try to head to bed too. G’night, dude.”

“Yeah. Good night.”

Hunk’s bedroom door clicks shut. Lance shuffles to bed and falls under his covers, still not quite believing what just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> comments are my life force, the blood in my veins, my reason to live (im joking mostly. a little)
> 
> critique is still very much welcome!!

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me abt klance on [tumblr](http://calliopin-around.tumblr.com)


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